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Hansgeorge felt a strange thrill pass through him; but he asked, saucily, “Will you be my wife, then?”

“Yes, yes, I will, Hansgeorge! I will!”

They embraced each other with transport, and Hansgeorge exclaimed, “I’ll never put a pipe into my mouth again as long as I live: if I do, I hope I may be—-“

“No, no; don’t swear, but keep your word: that’s much better. But now you will stay here, won’t you, Hansgeorge? Let the pipe and the Frenchman go to the devil together.”

Xavier and Fidele now came riding up, armed with pitchforks, and cried, “Hurry up, Hansgeorge! hurry up!”

“I am not going with you,” said Hansgeorge.

“What will you give us if we bring your pipe back?” asked Fidele.

“You may keep it.”

They rode off post-haste down the Empfingen road, Hansgeorge and Kitty looking after them. At the little hill by the clay-pit they had nearly caught up to the marauders; but when the latter found themselves pursued they turned, brandished their swords, and one of them drew a pistol. Fidele and Xavier, seeing this, turned round also, and returned faster than they had come.

From that day Hansgeorge never touched a pipe. Four weeks later his and Kitty’s banns were read in the church.

One day Hansgeorge went to the brickmaker’s: he had come unperceived, having taken the back way. He heard Kitty say to some one inside. “So you are sure it is the same?”

“Of course it is,” said the person addressed, whose voice he recognised as belonging to Little Red Meyer, a Jewish peddler. “Why, they were always seen together: for my part, I don’t see how he ever made up his mind to marry anybody else.”

“Well,” said Kitty, laughingly, “I only want to make him stare a little on our wedding-day. So you won’t disappoint me, will you?”

“I’ll do it as sure as I want to make a hundred thousand florins.”

“But Hansgeorge mustn’t hear a word about it.”

“Mum’s the word,” said Little Red Meyer, and took his leave.

Hansgeorge came in rather sheepishly, being ashamed to confess that he had been listening. But when they sat closely side by side, he said, “Kitty, don’t let them put any nonsense into your head: it’s no such thing. They once used to say that I was courting the maid at the Eagle, who is now in Rothweil: don’t you believe a bit of it. I wasn’t confirmed then: it was nothing but child’s-play.”

Kitty pretended to lay great stress on this matter, and put Hansgeorge to a world of trouble to clear himself. In the evening he did his best to pump the whole secret out of Little Red Meyer; but all in vain: his word was “mum.”

Hansgeorge had many things to go through with yet, and, in a manner, to run the gauntlet of the whole village. On the Sunday before the wedding, he, as well as his “playmate” Fidele, adorned their hats and left arms with red ribbons, and went, thus accoutred, from house to house, the groom that was to be repeating the following speech at every call:–“I want you to come to the wedding on Tuesday, at the Eagle. If we can do the same for you, we will. Be sure to come. Don’t forget. Be sure to come.” Thereupon the housewife invariably opened the table-drawer and brought out a loaf of bread and a knife, saying, “There! have some bread.” Then the intended groom was expected to cut a piece from the loaf and take it with him. The loss of his forefinger made Hansgeorge rather awkward at this operation; and many would hurt his feelings unintentionally by saying, “Why, Hansgeorge, you can’t cut the bread. You oughtn’t to get married: you are unfit for service.”

Hansgeorge rejoiced greatly when this ordeal was over.

The wedding was celebrated with singing and rejoicing, although there was no shooting, as it had been strictly forbidden since Hansgeorge’s misfortune.

The dinner was uncommonly merry. Immediately after it, Kitty slipped out into the kitchen, and came back with the memorable pipe in her mouth: no one, at least, could say that it was not the same. Kitty puffed away a little with a wry face, and then handed it to Hansgeorge, saying, “There, take it: you have kept your word like a man, and now you may smoke as much as you please. I don’t mind it a bit.”

Hansgeorge blushed up to the eyes, but shook his head. “What I have said is said, and not a mouse shall bite a crumb off: I’ll never smoke again in all my life. But, Kitty, I may kiss you after you’ve done smoking, mayn’t I?”

He strained her to his heart, and then confessed, laughing, that he had overheard a part of Kitty’s talk with Little Red Meyer, and had supposed they were speaking of the maid at the Eagle. The joke was much relished by all the company.

The pipe was hung up in state over the wedding-bed of the young couple; and Hansgeorge often points to it in proof of the maxim that love and resolution will enable a man to overcome any weakness or foible.

* * * * *

Many years are covered by a few short words. Hansgeorge and Kitty are venerable grandparents, enjoying a ripe old age in the midst of their descendants. The pipe is an heirloom in which their five sons have a common property: not one of them has ever learned to smoke.